House, Arras 1917 |
The house today, with the two gables above the turret re-made into one. |
Selected photos from summer 2000 set against photos taken during the war.
Click thumbnails to enlarge photo.
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House, Arras 1917 |
The house today, with the two gables above the turret re-made into one. |
Band / troops, Grand Palais, Arras April, 1917 |
The same, today. The Band was in the square to the right, just outside this photo. |
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View from rue de la Taillerie: Hotel de Ville in Grand Palais, Arras, 1919 |
The Hotel de Ville, rebuilt. Pillars bear pock-marks from shelling. Out of 4,521 houses in Arras, only 292 were undamaged at the end of WWI. |
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Champs Elysees today. The Allies marched through the arch victorious, in 1919, The Germans, in WWII when occupying Paris, then the Allies again after WWII. |
Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, during treaty negotiations, 1919 |
And with a little breathing room (i.e. between tourist crushes) today. |
German troops in the Grande Place, occupation of Lille, 1914. |
The Grande Place, with statue and fountain today. |
British Troops entering Lille, 21 Oct. 1918. Lille's opera house may be seen behind the Bourse (Old Exchange), building front/center. |
The Bourse today. |
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"In the soup."
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Trenches on Vimy today. |
Sanctuary Wood, near Ypres. |
Empty shrapnel shells at the Sanctuary Wood Museum today. |
German shell at moment of impact on Reims Cathedral. When the French showed Wilson the destruction in 1919, Wilson said of the damage to Reims and its Cathedral (to justified French outrage),"it really isn't so bad...." |
The Cathedral today, still under undergoing repair from WWI. |
Study Group on P&O Ferry
Dover-Calais
In London
At Cleopatra's Needle: damage is
visible on stone and bronze.
WWI RAF pilot Cecil Lewis wrote
of the
explosion in his memoir, Sagitarius
Rising:
"The first [bomb from German aircraft]
had just missed
Cleopatra's Needle. Fragments
had pierced the paws and side
of the bronze lion; the second
had torn its way through four
floors at the corner of 2 Savoy
Hill, thirty feet from [Lewis's] hotel" (210).
Cosmo Place, Bloomsbury, with the
Swan, Cagney's, Queen's Larder.
France and elsewhere
A passing ferry, making for Dover
from Calais.
A British 18-pounder, at
Hawthorne Ridge where the
Battle of the Somme (1 July 1916)
began.
A gas shell, again at Hawthorne
Ridge.
A German shell at Cote 304, near
Verdun.
The inside of a shrapnel shell,
this in the Musee des Abris, beneath
the Bascilica
at Albert, France.
British Trenches at Newfoundland
Memorial.
Ironically, after the war, Gen.
Haig opened this Memorial on the
Somme where he had orchestrated
the attack of 1 July 1916. It
produced 57,470 Allied casualties
in one day. Of the 801 Newfoundland
soldiers, many of whom advanced
over this very ground, only 68
unwounded men answered at role
call on 2 July.
A commonwealth War Grave site,
below Vimy.
A Demarcation Stone, near Verdun:
it indicates the farthest point
to (but not beyond) which
the German army advanced in WWI.
Steps in Montmartre.
Beneath the Arch d' Triumph, Paris:
the tomb of France's unknown soldier
(Inconnu).
France's unknown soldier was chosen
from among the fallen of Verdun.
They're not Hemingway and Stein,
but it is
La Cupole
